These men can’t be serious

From today’s editorial: Two police union leaders go so far as to file a lawsuit over hurt feelings stemming from a disagreement with District Attorney David Soares.

Truly, we’re hard-pressed to imagine a more frivolous lawsuit than the personal injury case that two police union leaders have brought against Albany County District Attorney David Soares.

James Lyman, a retired Albany detective and executive director of Council 82, and Christian Mesley, an Albany police officer and president of Council 82, actually went to court last year to claim damages for the “mental anguish” they were suffering from what they say were libelous and slanderous remarks Mr. Soares made about them during his 2008 re-election campaign.

Mr. Soares, you see, had said that some comments Mr. Lyman and Mr. Mesley made about him amounted to lies.

This was the same race, keep in mind, in which union leaders staged protests outside the house in Delmar where Mr. Soares was living at the time, challenging the credentials and qualifications of the man finishing his first term as DA.

Among Mr. Lyman’s and Mr. Mesley’s many objections to Mr. Soares’ tenure was that a county judge had set bail too low, in their view, in the case of Travis Telemaque, a man accused of pointing a gun at two Albany police officers, who subsequently shot him. The union leaders blamed Mr. Soares, while the district attorney countered that his office had no say in the bail decision. Mr. Soares further pointed out that his office had been recused in the case of Mr. Telemaque, who later pleaded to guilty to federal drug and weapons charges. Mr. Soares said he sought a special prosecutor in the Telemaque case because his office was overseeing the grand jury investigation that later cleared the officers who shot Mr. Telemaque.

Here, specifically, is what Mr. Soares said — in a TV interview — that Mr. Lyman and Mr. Mesley say inflicted such mental suffering upon them:

“It is very disingenuous and troubling that former law enforcement, people who are familiar with the criminal justice system, are out there perpetrating what is essentially a lie,” their lawsuit quotes Mr. Soares as saying.

By the standards of the 2008 DA’s race, a nasty and contentious rematch of an even more bitter race that Mr. Soares had won in 2004, such words strike us as harsh, perhaps, but well within bounds.

Mr. Lyman and Mr. Mesley attacked Mr. Soares. He returned the favor. If sharp political rhetoric were as libelous and slanderous as these plaintiffs say it is, the pursuit of justice might well grind to a halt in Albany County.

Imagine what Mr. Soares’ detractors and outright enemies might say about him then. Six years later, some people still can’t bring themselves to accept that he’s the duly elected district attorney.

Other people, meanwhile, might remember that Mr. Lyman is a retired cop. Mr. Mesley is still a cop, on paid leave as union president. Both men continue to represent cops. That’s a job, of course, that involves exposure to real trauma, not mere harsh words.

These men know what suffering is and what anguish is. Their lawsuit has demonstrated precious little evidence of either. It’s an embarrassment to the officers they represent. It should be thrown out of court.

4 Responses

I feel for the hard working women and men of law enforcement but not these two men who are looking for a payday from a frivolous law suit. And their claim of hypertension, etc., could it be diet and exercise contribute to their health problems?

This case is devoid of any merit and one does not need to hold a JD or be a member of the Bar to see it for what it is … baseless frivolity and a Hail Mary pass with the only goal being to take a bite out of the Albany County taxpayer.

If we had a “Loser Pays” civil justice system like they have in England, cases like this would never be filed and these two union thugs would have to stick to feigning hearing loss to pad their already overly generous public pensions.

If it is possible, I would love to see Albany County counter sue these fools. Let’s see how much mental anguish they have when we, the taxpayers of Albany County, are putting liens on their houses to get back the money we spent defending ourselves.

If they were truly concerned with public ridicule, they would have never filed this case. From now on anyone who hears their names will laugh a little at the fools who wanted to run with the big dogs but cried like puppies instead.